Developing cultural intelligence through teaching and training

Given that Cultural Intelligence (CQ) became a highly desirable competency for anyone who works or lives in a multicultural environment, two important questions arise: can we develop CQ? If yes, how can we develop it? To answer these questions we reviewed the relatively recent body of studies that examined the effects of teaching and training interventions on CQ. We conclude that a strong and fairly consistent evidence indicates that we can increase participants’ CQ through a variety of interventions, which range from traditional academic courses to field experiences in foreign countries. We found that CQ was meaningfully increased through both co-located experiences as well as through virtual collaboration, which is an important good news given ongoing and future mobility restrictions. Among the moderating trends we observed were differential effects of certain interventions on different CQ dimensions and that the magnitude of students’ CQ increase related to student characteristics.